It took iTunes nearly three years to get to 1 billion song downloads. MySpace Music streamed a billion songs in just a few days after it launched on September 25. And while this isn’t a fair comparison (songs on MySpace are free to stream; on iTunes users were paying $0.99 each), it’s an incredible milestone.
What MySpace won’t say for some reason is what the billionth song was, or when exactly it was streamed (which would be nice for trivia purposes). But they are confirming that the billionth stream was initiated sometime last week, just a few days after launch. They are also issuing a rather convoluted statement:
We’re extremely pleased with the launch of MySpace Music—clearly our users around the world are engaged and excited about the new music experience on MySpace. We’ve hit some incredible milestones in only a few days—some of the numbers you’re reading about are already out of date.
We can confirm that we hit a milestone of one billion music streams in only a few days after launching the new product however because this number may be inflated by the high profile launch and accompanying promotional push, we will be looking to our metrics on engagement and unique users which will tell a much richer story on how positively the community is responding to the new music experience. We will continue to keep you posted on the response to MySpace Music.
MySpace Music’s impact on the music industry won’t be fully understood for months or years (here’s our prediction). But one thing is certain – they are streaming a ton of music to users. The labels, which own part of the joint venture and are also paid per stream, must be very happy.
Wasn’t MySpace already streaming music before MSM launch? And it’s been 10 days.
in a very limited way, yes (a few songs from some artists). If you read the post, you’ll see that the milestone was reached early last week, not today.
MSM is nothing more than a new flash player stuck on top of the existing band pages (ie: http://www.mysp...com/kingsofleon) — they are counting everytime someone visits a band page, and the music auto plays (just as it has for the last 8 years) — lame.
Actually, most of us that actually use the traditional myspace site do not have auto-play music because we turn it off in the ’settings’.
Besides that, this article is about MM, not myspace, which you are obviously too good to visit.
Most oklahomans aren’t so pretentious.
“Ed”,
You, along with Arrington obviously don’t get the ruse Myspace is playing. If you goto “music.myspace.com” it just redirects to myspace.com — and if you click ANY of the artists on that page, it takes you to their myspace profiles.
How is this ANY different than before? The new flash player… THAT’S IT.
So you have “auto play” disabled in your settings, good for you… what about the SEO users who land on an artists page? They obviously don’t have “settings” — so they get auto play, and guess what — it counts as a one of those billions of “streams”.
I’m not in Oklahoma, and pretentious? Not so much — I just see what Myspace is trying to do.
Mike, you are right, it is not a fair comparison: free vs $0.99 per song.
btw who pays the labels for the streams? the News Corp?
Thanks
I love that the TC250 get so impressed by how much time most americans spend on myspace.
Facebook has so much pull in this circle, but it’s like “staying home” nd myspace is like “gong out”.
Total dorks.
Obviously getting off to a great start, but my question is whether or not the advertisers are able to afford this many streams for very little CTR? There must be a cap on the streams they are willing to pay for, and then the question becomes is the venture able to turn a profit on the heavy volume of streams? The only way it seems possible is if the labels are indeed giving them a break on the streaming rates, which could cause some questioning.. Any thoughts Mike?
With an average of 2 MB per song; that’s about 2+ petabyte (2000+ terabyte) in traffic in a week…
Depends on the bitrate, I assume they would cut down the quality for this significantly.
How will this be more successful than Pandora. I thought the licensing fees made ad supported streaming unprofitable ???
It looks exactly like the old model where they were being streamed for free. Can you confirm that they still aren’t paying the RIAA royalties on internet song plays?
This looks like a new design of the MySpace CMS music component, and nothing more.
“MySpace Music streamed a billion songs”
That’s counting all the songs streamed since 2003 though right, so actually it took them 5+ years
That’s what I think. I can’t quite believe it, if they didn’t count past streams. Furthermore, iTunes was not international at launch, it took them a few years to add more countries.
Myspace Music isn’t international – it’s only accessible from the US.
But the pre-”store” streams were. Only applies if they are counting those.
http://www.mysp...tion=misc.terms
The terms are still the same.
“The license you grant to MySpace is non-exclusive (meaning you are free to license your Content to anyone else in addition to MySpace), fully-paid and royalty-free (meaning that MySpace is not required to pay you for the use on the MySpace Services of the Content that you post)”
I don’t see an exception for certain artists and their band pages look exactly like the old band profile pages with the same player???
Try looking up some of the earlier posts regarding Myspace Music here on TC. It’s got pretty much nothing to do with the old site except the domain name. They’ve got a deal with the four major labels allowing them to stream any of their songs for a slice of the advertising revenue. This isn’t just music artists have uploaded, but complete discographies the labels probably supplied.
For example, this page has all (?) of Leonard Cohen’s albums: http://www.mysp...nardcohenlegacy
Can you describe where all these albums are found, Vlad? I’m only seeing 4 songs on that page.
Never mind, this is courtesy of some sort of press release thingee I found:
“It allows American MySpace users the ability to listen to free and unlimited, full-length audio streaming via an unlimited playlist functionality.”
…
“WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR MYSPACE CANADA?
This is a phased global launch and at this time MySpace Music has not yet confirmed specific dates for roll out outside of the US.”
My comment a couple of lines down stands.
Also, iTunes is counting sales, not plays. Plays resulting from sales probably summed up to 1bn much earlier than the 1bn sales milestone was reached.
“We’re extremely pleased with the launch of MySpace Music—clearly our users around the world are engaged and excited about the new music experience on MySpace.”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t MySpace Music only available in the USA currently? Unless they mean to say “our American users are engaged, and the rest of our users are excited”…
I’m pretty sure it’s available everywhere, which is pleasantly surprising and contributes to the giant step MM represents with regard to industry practices.
I just want to know who will pay for the such huge amount of free music? Advertisers? or Myspce company or music company?
The free music mean we must accept the harass of advertisement which we don’t like?
Their new situation is pretty slick and I might use it a lot if I logged into myspace more than once a week.
(128 (kilobits per second) * (3 minutes) * 1 billion) / (8 days) = 31.7891439 gigabits per second
techcrunch is now the national fucking inquirer
Firstly, Mike got it wrong, they “meant” since 2003 when they branched off friendster and made band pages for profiles.
Secondly, they did *NOT* keep count since then, so at some point they approximated and started counting incrementally from there. ( and probably skipped thousands or millions in increments along the way such as they did with the profile ids which were supposed to auto-increment by 1, but have gaps of hundreds of thousands in the early id numbers )
They also probably counted testing plays and they have LOTS of employees and QA.
What does this mean?
It means that in all likelyhood, Myspace had a dev team restyle the Music component of the CMS, and put out this billion number as a marketing figure. It’s mostly likely extremely inaccurate.
nope. this is streams since the new launch only.
Woah!!!
I’m sure that they only counted “starts” and not full songs played.
Is the myspace music store setup to auto-start the music selection? That probably helped to jump the count up so high too.
58% of all stats are made up anyhow.
“58% of all stats are made up anyhow.”
I heard it was 57.4% ?
Oh come on… they were able to provide for a massive 4GB per second within 8 days of launch? If that is true, no bullshit, then the network guys who whoever they peer with should be made gods for being able to cope.
31gb per second? Less than 1/3 of MySpace internet transit…
Doesn’t surprise me as music starts streaming automatically whenever you enter/refresh/whatever a band’s myspace page. It’s pretty much what stops me using the thing as a resource.
its quite unbelievable somehow.
Oh wow, that’s crazy despite it being streams vs. downloads.
It’s not that unbelievable, rather it’s not very meaningful. The top artist was streamed 10 million times. (”The top-streamed track since the September 25th launch is “Whatever You Like” by T.I., which garnered 10.9 million plays. Other in-demand tracks include “Can’t Believe It” by T-Pain (4.2 million); “So What” by Pink (4.2 million); “My Life” by The Game featuring Lil Wayne (3.9 million); and “Miss Independent” by Ne-Yo (3.5 million). “) That means in a week (6 days) ONE-TENTH of all MySpace users listened to the most popular track ONCE; or more likely, a much, much smaller percentage than 10% listened to the top artist a few times. Hundreds and hundreds of songs and artists were listened to far less. Probably before you are even out of the top ten list, you are talking about 1% or less of the community listening to a track ONCE. For 90% of all artists, you are talking about a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of users listening once a month. (What is an artist’s cut — 5% (standard cut from studio) of at best 1% (the percentage of all music plays) of 40% (the amount the studios own) of a few low CPM ads?)
And this during the biggest hype period when artists, studios, other social networks, social music sites, a couple of people at Apple, bloggers, and Michael Arrington particularly were clicking away at it.
And again, these are by no means full song listens, they are streams initiated most likely.
“The top artist was streamed 10 million times.” Apologies, I meant top track; it wouldn’t be hard to imagine T.I. having several top tracks.
A good comparison is Pandora for iPhone. They streamed 3.3 million songs to a few hundred thousand iPhone owners out of a potential market of less than 10 million iPhone users over a single weekend in their early going with a database of less than a million songs, creating a new market out of nothign rather than a preexisting userbase of 100 million. Pandora only has 20 million in funding, not the ownership of MySpace, the four major studios, and the sought after 100 million in funding. Pandora is barely surviving.
(Pandora has served close to 5 billion streams in 2 years to less than 7 million uers.)
http://www.tech...nes-killer-app/
where did you get all the song details? MySpace hasn’t released any information about that.
I read the original story that MA links to.
This may be impressive, but it’s only available to US residents still isn’t it? I’m sure it would be more impressive if it was opened up to other countries as well. Greedy, greedy Myspace.
It’s amazing to think that most of the top streamed artists are illiterate, rotten toothed rappers who speak over slow drum beats and occasionally throw words like “hoe” and “money” around in their songs.
Myspace Music has just given me evidence that civilisation is coming to end. I can’t believe that the movie Idiocracy by Mike Judge is actually probably going to come true and this is the strongest evidence yet.
zzz. Free music? Of course it was streamed a gazillion times. But it’s not sustainable. So I guess go ahead and give them all the free PR they deserve, but try to limit the hype around the “impact on the Internet music industry”. Ad-supported models DONT WORK. When are we all going to realize that??! Sorry, I digress. The only real comment I had is the following: MySpace clearly needs to give the PR team a few ‘copywriting for press statements’ classes. Unless they want to continue sounding like their 10-year-old users.
Interesting…has anyone done the math to see what CPMs are needed in order to support the royalties?
I’m pretty sure that’s the point: MySpace and the studios aren’t even bothering trying to do the math. For MySpace its gravy and a way to preserve their audience against Facebook. For the studios, it’s some revenue, any revenue. For the artists, on the other hand — they’re going to be pissed when they get $200 bucks for 20 million streams (or whatever absurd payout to the creators it is). So they’re just making up the math and hoping they can either screw the artists or keep them happy for a while while they hurt others in the game. Why do you think a company formed with the infrastructure and userbase of MySpace and the creative property portfolio of America’s biggest studios need to raise five times as much money as Pandora which they hate and want to destroy?
Well, not Mike’s point. But anyone who is not impressed with MySpace Music or those who think music should be free.
It still is geared only for the majors.. they cut out the indies, although they dont say that.. the majors in effect tell them what to do.. .. this was a great hope.. i get great A&R’d from top music executives and produced by people that make the hits for the top artist today.. all at http://www.beatslocker.com …. rap beats and pop beats, …… all thats left is the promo, that still too expensive and myspace could of done that…..but myspace sold out…
sure seems like there’s lots of indie music in there to me.
prove it! oh, sorry, i forgot, you can’t! faux journalism at its very best.
well, they have Orchard and all the independent distributors, which is a ton of indie music.
no, my mistake, prove the billion plays/downloads/whatever! this is pulled from the clear blue sky, rule 1! don’t parrot press releases!
For a guy who was knocking Hulu (and you were dead wrong) – you sure are impressed with MySpace (and you will be dead wrong again). And you have yet to lay out a clear reason why you feel MySpace music is such a success and when no one else does.
Reference iTunes and then say it is not a comparison – you are sounding very much like a certified FIX (FOX) News journalist.
Come to think of it – TechCrunch CEO Heather Harde is a former Fox Interactive Media Executive – hmmm.
I believe I’ve stated my case quite clearly in earlier posts, linked to above. Recorded music is moving towards free, with other revenue streams like concerts to fill the gap. MySpace Music is the next step in that inevitable outcome.
Revenue streams from Concerts, T-Shirts, etc go directly to artists – and Music Lables are far away from making money from those streams (they have to put new contractual agreements in place with their Artists- ain’t gong to happen anytime soon. If you know the basics of the recorded music business, this should not be news to anyone). Artists will come out ahead -and MySpace will be just another player in that space if they sell T-Shirts and Concert Tickets. Creating the next Amazon Affiliate (as in MySpace Music) is not going to save the music business. There needs to be more than just free to have any significant updside for the labels. And as for the billion streams – MySpace has been streaming music for many years now – and unless they put up the numbers for the “new” MySpace Music – there is nothing to talk about. And if they did stream a billion – good for them. MySpace pages are filled with widgets – not just one – but dozens – so easy to get a few streams. Still progress if they served a billion streams.
Companies like CDBaby – have gotten more digital sales from their own artist websites in one week than MySpace reveunue in 8 months. Numbers – facts – laid out by CDBaby. And artists kept most of the money, instead of carving it up with half a dozen intermediaries.
Mike, I know that is your position on what the model will be in the new music industry, but so few artists sell enough copies to be able to afford to tour, that the lack of revenue streams from traditional means will preclude 98 percent of artists from making $. Even if it’s 95 percent of artist right now who can’t make money (just making up that figure), you are still see 3/5ths of the artists who were profitable no longer being able to be that.
Concert sales and tours only account for the successful artists. True, free music will help make them more money, but for everyone else who can’t afford to tour now, their primary source of income will continue to diminish.
This is such a big stretch that its almost untrue.
10 days and 1 billion songs. It means if 20 mil users *each* have to stream 50 songs over a period of 10 days. or 50 mil users have to *each* stream 20 songs.
20 songs only takes an hour to play through. If it’s just stream starts it amounts to skimming the playlist of a handful of bands, maybe 15 minutes on the site.
agree with those prior, the data have to be starts, not full streams. Probably a good chunk of those are several million people outside the US trying to access songs and finding they can’t. And the advertisers get to pay a) for customers they don’t want and b) for advertising in an experience that wasn’t delivered. Liars can figure and figures can lie.
“What MySpace won’t say for some reason is what the billionth song was”
I doubt they can tell. One billion streams started in ten days is more than one stream starting every millisecond. (Insert slight incredulity at these figures here, but let’s take them at their word.) Logs *might* contain pertinent timestamps to millisecond accuracy, but the host clocks involved are unlikely to be synced that tightly.
Many streams start as soon as you land on an artist page.
a gazillion streams is like a gazillions pv’s – worthless unless you can monetise them. great PR but there’s a bigger issue that needs to be solved.
They streamed 1 billion songs in a week. Does this mean that their traffic is down? I’ve read in a couple places including link below that they were doing 5 B streams a month and that was in July.
http://distorte...k-head-to-head/
the numbers dont add up!!!